Welcome To Our

Hayden, a great grandchild, was born today.

For various complicated and painful reasons, all unimportant today, this child may never learn about two of the women who walked life’s complicated path before her.

In the greater sense, that reality is unimportant. Many whose genes contributed to her being are long gone and only one survivor of my segment of her genetic inheritance remains.

I write only in the vague and distant hope that if our perilous world continues, one day another remote Donlon descendant will check into her ancestry.

So aware there have been numerous genetic factors making this day possible, I must acknowledge with gratitude their being and strength. I also am truly confident this child will one day learn of her other ancestors from diverse related sources.

However, It is the other darkened side of her ancestry that I will tell of today.

I will give voice to two women, both of whom I treated with polite respect, but wish I had either loved or known far better.

Nellie Quinn and Mary Kelly both survived the perils of childbirth while studiously observing the edicts of a religion that violently disapproved of any method of limiting parenthood.

Consequently, their broods were large. One suffered the pangs of childbirth sans anesthesia twelve times in fourteen years of marriage. That suffering was minute compared to the death of six of her cherished youngsters in early childhood.

Somehow a still young and fragile Nellie was able to instill love verging on idolatry in the family that survived.

In today’s lingo:

“She must have done something right!”

to achieve such fidelity.

Mary Kelly, also a young wife and Mother, lived several blocks away in the heart of what then was rightfully called, Hells Kitchen. She, too, endured childbirth in a cold water tenement, but a mere five times.

Blessed to watch four of her children reach maturity, sadly, Mary was also cursed. She was destined to watch her youngest infant’s death. The fatal accident was tragically triggered by a man’s despair and uncontrolled alcoholic rage.

Facing disapproval of one and all, (family, neighbors and fellow parishioners,) a very young Mother chose to rear her surviving four without any pretense of a happy marriage.

Mary Kelly found the meager financial means to accomplish her family’s frugal independence by working a night shift in a NYC hospital until her death at 72.

Her young family learned both independence and responsibility quite early in life while being reared by a single parent.

Three of Mary’s surviving children held their beloved Mother in respectful esteem throughout their lifetimes.

Like her counterpart, Nelly Quinn; Mary Kelly, obviously, did something right.

Sadly, her oldest daughter wept bitter tears the dark morning she bade final adieu to a Mother, foolishly abandoned by a defiant teenager.

Today, little one, as you enter a world (we may or may not briefly share,) memories can be my only gift.

I pray the path you have begun is ever free of thorns.

If by chance, in years to come, one accidentally pierces your heart, remember you have inherited the strength of two strong women.

I choose to believe they smiled today the moment their great great great granddaughter entered an amazing world.